The Accidental Pallbearer (19 page)

“Yes.”

Music off.

“Open your mouth.” The cold barrel of a .38 inserted.

“Close your mouth. Good. Feel good? Answer me, darling.”

Coca nods, whimpers.

“Do we understand one another?”

Coca nods.

“How the
fuck
could it feel good, asshole, to have a .38 in your mouth? You cunt. But I really do understand why you’d think it wise to nod in the affirmative. I really do. Can’t be too careful with our answers, can we, sweetheart? Don’t answer. Good. This’ll go easily for everybody, especially for your honorable guests, and perhaps you, as well, depending. Depending. Feel something firm in your – I can’t say the word because my mother, may she rest in peace, will wash my mouth out with soap. She’ll pierce my naughty tongue with a hot needle. How could you not appreciate what you feel in your?” Rintrona laughs quietly. “Stupid question? Yes? Be careful. Answer with maximum care. Because I’m sick of your lies. Prepared for a viewing?”

Coca nods.

“Goody! Goody goody gumdrops! When I remove the blindfold keep your eyes shut tight until I tell you to open them. Be a good bitch and the chances of survival are fifty-fifty. Suppress the urge to scream when I tell you to open those peepers or your chances of survival are one in forty-three point three. Open your eyes.”

Michael C in a mental scream: Mouth open wide without sound. Standing about five feet away, a short rotund man, in a happy-face rubber clown mask that covers his skull,
naked except for a pair of jockey shorts artfully stuffed with three pair of socks. A .38 in his right hand, barrel in mouth. Surgical gloves. About ten feet back, in shadow, a figure of impressive size. Black coat to the ankles. Black watch cap low over the forehead and covering his ears. A black cloth covering his face, with eye holes, fluttering with every exhale. White tennis shoes, red laces. Surgical gloves.

Clown mask walks over to the man in black, points to the face covering, says, “Do you know what this is?” Coca shakes his head. “The Minister’s Black Veil, dummy. Do you know who he is?” Coca shakes his head. “The Man of the Crowd.” From the pocket of his long coat, the man in black removes a dildo of epic proportions, a fork with sharpened tines protruding from its tip. “Oh, God, please!” Clown mask says, “You blaspheme. I am not God. That, dear Mikey, is your unlubricated destiny, should you not truthfully cooperate. Do you know the meaning of home?” Coca stares. “Home is the place, when you have to go there, they have to take you in. We have come to take you in.”

The Man of the Crowd, enforked dildo in hand, walks behind Michael C, kneels, slowly withdraws the secret fantasy of all stout-hearted men, the smaller dildo, then presses his instrument against, but not within. Clown mask says, “Do you renounce Satan and the glamour of evil, from this day forth?” Coca replies, “I won’t bother Antonio Robinson from this day forth.” Clown mask says, “You bet your bloody ass you won’t.” Coca in a torrent, “On the van that day, you want me to tell you about the van that day when the light was red and the running nigger had the light in his favor and was going to cross in front of the van when the light
was red, and Robinson what he did I’ll tell you about that, you want me to tell you about that when Robinson who is driving sees the running nigger he’s going to cross in front of the van because he has the light in his favor and Robinson stiff-arms out the window like a traffic cop, which is all he ever deserved to be, except Big Daddy, he stiff-arms to the running nigger like you stop traffic and the nigger doesn’t cross even though he has the light in his favor and Robinson even though the light is red floors it across the intersection and broadsides the bus, you want me to tell you about that he did it on purpose, the driving nigger didn’t want to kill the running nigger because even though the running nigger had the light the driving nigger knew he was going to run it, we never get to the cemetery to protect, they were shot, you want me to tell you about that and I won’t bother Robinson from this day forth? Do you want me to?” Clown mask says, “This is your last chance. Do you, or do you not, renounce Satan and the glamour of evil?” Coca passes out. Ammonia. He revives. Eagerly swallows the Campari they hold to his mouth in greedy gulps. Goes under.

Rintrona and Conte haul him to bed. Remove cuffs, empty the remaining contents of the bottle of Campari, remove their costumes, turn off the small lamp, return it to its original place and leave. In the car, Conte calls Castellano to tell him that he’s on the way.

Castellano replies, “Don’t rush. He’s safe.”

Rintrona says, “Kinter now?”

“Appears so.”

“How did I do, Eliot?”

“Your improvisational powers are considerable. I hardly recognized you, Bobby.”

“My work at Troy Little Theater.”

“You’re an actor?”

“More fun than a barrel of monkeys.”

“We won’t need costumes for the next one.”

“Kinter?”

“Jed.”

In civvies, and packing heat, Conte and Rintrona are greeted before they can knock by Castellano holding a glass of red wine. He urges them to make themselves comfortable in the front room, then goes to the kitchen and carries back two glasses and the bottle.

Conte stands, says, in irritation, “You cannot be serious. Where is he, Tom?”

“Who would you be referring to, Detective?”

“Cut it out, Tom.”

“Stop fucking with us, Mr. Castellano.”

“I thought we’d relax first.”

Conte and Rintrona shoot him lethal looks.

Tom says, “Okay, okay.”

They follow him into the kitchen where they find what Conte assumes to be Jed Kinter on the floor, feet tied together and hands tied behind his back, with a pillowcase, stained with what appears to be blood, tied around the head. The body lies motionless.

Conte is speechless, Rintrona says “Christ!” Tom says,
“Book ’em, Danno.” Rintrona pokes the body with his foot. No response. Conte, with rising anger, says, “What have you goddamn done?”

Rintrona kicks the body with some force. No response. “Guy is really out.”

“Tom?”

“Like I told you, Detective. I invited him to dinner. He comes down around 5:30. I offer him a glass of wine. I tell him, like you said, I might be coming down with something or it’s my fuckin’ allergies. That’s how I said it, my fuckin’ allergies, to relax him. He goes, I suffer from allergies too. I sympathize, Mr. Castellano. He’s very polite with me, as usual. I say, I’m going to start the sausage and peppers. I had already browned the sausage before he came, to save time for the main event. I say, Make yourself at home, and give him a bottle of wine and the
O.D
. I say all this, like you said, in a bored voice. He starts reading about that woman who was murdered, he must’ve been, because he says, Too bad about that woman on Chestnut Street, I used to live in that neighborhood. I say, This town is getting worse and worse. He says nothing. We’re pretty quiet after that. He uses the bathroom. When he gets back, after a long time I gotta say, he must have a gut problem, I serve the sausage and peppers. He compliments me excessively. Says his mother and wife can’t cook a damn and that’s why he has a second-rate stomach. I say, But I can, Jed. He looks at me in a way that’s almost sad. Fuck you, I think. How about a second helping, son, I say. I work the father-son angle. He says, I’d love it. Now picture how I arranged him with his back to the stove. That’s the crucial
detail. I take his dish over. I put a second helping on his plate. I bring him the plate. I go back to the stove with my plate, he’ll think I’m going for a second. The frying pan. You can test it out. It’s giving me tendinitis over the years. It’s a heavy fuckin’ thing. Badda BOOM!!! With everything I got over the head. I tie him up good, as you observe. The bastard bleeds from the ears on my nice tile floor, which I paid through the nose for, so I get the pillow-case from the dirty laundry basket and that’s about it. He’s all yours, fellas, though I’m happy to lend a further hand.”

Conte removes the pillowcase. Rintrona asks for ammonia and a rag. Castellano responds, “My pleasure.” When Kinter starts to come to, Rintrona asks, “Now what, Eliot?” Conte tells him he’ll pull into the driveway so they can put him into the trunk unobserved.

“Can I come with you and your friend, who I have yet to be introduced to?”

“From here on, Tom, you need to be insulated from the facts.”

“Are you and your mysterious friend pleased with my work?”

“Anyone know you invited him for dinner?”

“Besides you and your unknown friend?”

“Right.”

“No.”

“Let’s keep it that way.”

Conte replaces the pillow-case as Kinter begins to babble meaninglessly. Before driving away, he calls Robinson, tells him about the photos, what Castellano found in the attic,
the McPherson connection, that they have Kinter secured and are bringing him to the Savage Arms. They drive off. Thumping sounds from the trunk.

Rintrona says, “I thought for a minute he actually killed him, which would be okay except we’d have a problem with the body. What now, Eliot?”

Conte tells him they’re going to a parking lot behind an abandoned factory on the edge of the city, where the chief of police will meet them. Rintrona says, “This is beginning to make me feel like a criminal. I’m thinking I should bow out.”

“Want me to take you to your car?”

“Under no circumstances.”

Conte parks behind the Savage Arms. Robinson is already there. The only light from a full moon. Robinson wants to know who the third party is. Conte tells him a “friend with experience, who shall remain nameless. Totally to be trusted.”

“So where is he?”

Conte and Rintrona haul Kinter onto the broken pavement of weeds and broken glass, used condoms here and there, Kinter twisting and kicking his bound feet. Robinson says, “Keep the bag over his head. Let’s have some privacy.” They walk away, out of earshot. Robinson tells Conte that a video was forwarded to him that afternoon showing the plate of Conte’s car and Conte himself entering the McPherson residence at the wrong time. A video taken by Kinter, “who must have tailed you there, and who obviously killed her.”

“And who was too stupid,” Eliot says, “to know that his address could not be hidden?”

“Not necessarily stupid, El.”

“In the end,” Rintrona adds, “it’s their stupidity that’s the nail in their coffin. Even the smartest of the worst of them are stupid in the end.”

“Not necessarily. Your friend going to assist us tonight with speeches?”

“What are you implying, Robby?”

“I’m saying ever since that train incident your judgment is off. You’re too emotional. What do we have? We have exactly nothing. The photos can’t conclusively identify him as the substitute pallbearer. The platform shoes and revolver any shrewd lawyer will demonstrate can’t be linked conclusively to Kinter. Maybe they were planted. Maybe Castellano was the substitute pallbearer, which is why they ended up in his attic. You get the picture? This is what I’m saying.”

“But the DNA from the semen will definitively tie him to the murder. No lawyer can explain it away.”

“Oh, yeah? The lawyer puts him on the stand and he testifies that he went over to say hello to his ex-landlady, who in fact invited him over, they got friendly, she fucked him, he leaves and you come into the picture.
Capeesh
? The video is used to nail
you
, which Kinter admittedly took because he feared for her when he’s in the car and sees you pull up and enter – you, he testifies, who terrorized him violently on a train several days ago. You’re a violent person. He sends me the video because he’s a responsible citizen. Where does that leave us, El? Up shit creek without a paddle.”

Rintrona speaks: “Mr. Robinson has it right. The son of a bitch walks.”

Kinter thrashes on the broken pavement. Bleeds from both ears. Yelling.

“He kills Aristarco,” Eliot says, “the Barbones, no doubt DePellaccio. And Nelson Thomas and –”

“He didn’t kill Thomas. A witness got a partial on a plate. It was another drunken college kid. We brought him in and he confessed.”

“Kinter kills Janice McPherson and walks? He does five murders, the first four I don’t give a damn, nobody really does, but Janice McPherson I give a damn. He trailed me there. I brought him there, and he
walks
?”

“Just a second, gentleman,” Robinson says, “I think I can fix the situation, but before I do, did you deal well with Michael C?”

“You’re safe now.”

Robinson goes over to Kinter, still thrashing, but quietly now. Robinson’s back to Conte and Rintrona. Robinson crouches at Kinter’s head. Can be heard speaking, softly, indistinctly. Kinter says, loudly, “Since when did you grow a pair?” Robinson fires four times through the pillowcase and through Kinter’s brain. He stands, turns to Conte and Rintrona: “He doesn’t walk. Satisfied, El? Satisfy your violent streak?”

Robinson removes two dropcloths from his trunk, wraps the body and drags it to the trunk. Says, “Hope your friend here is safe, El. Or else. I’ll take care of the rest,” drives off.

Rintrona says, “You can take me to my car now.”